The move is part of a new strategy to combat organized crime violence across the province, following the brazen targeted murder of Craig Widdifield

Surrey RCMP Chief Supt. Bill Fordy updates the media, April 25th, 2013 about the recent gang shooting of Craig Widdifield. Widdifield was shot at a busy residential and business complex.

Photograph by: Ward Perrin
, PNG

METRO VANCOUVER - B.C.’s anti-gang policing agency plans to release the names of as many gangsters as possible as part of a new strategy to combat deadly organized crime violence across the province.

Chief Supt. Dan Malo, head of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, said gangsters are now being treated as prolific offenders and targeted at every level by all policing agencies in B.C.

“Any [name] I am allowed to release will be made available. And we will try to do that as much as we can,” Malo said. “In the future that is part of the strategy.”

Malo announced the new measures at a Surrey news conference about the brazen targeted murder of 28-year-old newlywed gangster Craig Widdifield outside a Steve Nash Gym in south Surrey Wednesday evening.

Widdifield was well-known to police as a player in the local drug trade, working with a variety of gangs and organized criminals.

Surrey RCMP Chief Supt. Bill Fordy said the shooting about 7 pm at the busy Morgan Crossing complex on 24th Avenue at 160th Street was “disgusting.”

“Let me speak very clearly. What happened last evening is not acceptable. The fact that somebody would sneak up on another man in a public venue… in the presence of children, men and women that are going about their business and enjoying their evening is disgusting,” he said. “The impact of this brutal event extends beyond that of the victim who also has a family and people who love him. It impacts on every man and woman who lives in our society and enjoys the fundamental rights and freedoms of our country.”

Fordy said he has deployed his officers to gang hangouts around the city to let those involved in organized crime know they are not welcome in Surrey, where 11 people have been murdered so far in 2013.

“I am also asking owners and managers of businesses that these persons frequent to stand beside us and deliver a very clear message to people that attend these restaurants, bars and gyms. And that message is simply this: you are not welcome here and we do not want your dirty money,” Fordy said.

“Simply put, we’ve had enough. It is time for us as a society to stand together and to stop this violence. This is in part a policing problem. But in its totality, it is a community problem.”

Integrated Homicide Investigation Team media officer, Sgt. Jennifer Pound, said police continue to search for a silver or grey Volkswagen Passat believed to have been used by the suspect to flee.

While Widdifield had no criminal record, he was the subject of a lawsuit by the B.C. Civil Forfeiture Office in 2011 over $46,750 seized by Surrey RCMP that investigators believed was from drug trafficking.

Police pulled over a car in which Widdifield, Tan Dat Nguyen, Tri Minh Nguyen, Sarah Chaudhry and Lakana Mob were in on 148th Street on April 10, 2007 and found the cash in a gift bag in the trunk.

The civil suit said the money was the proceeds of drug sales by Widdifield, and the two Nguyens in the car. The two women denied any knowledge of the cash.

“The money was received from, used in the commission of, and/or intended to be used for the purchasing and trafficking of controlled substances,” the suit, seeking forfeiture of the cash, alleged.

Widdifield grew up in White Rock and was just married last October. He has a young child.

While he worked for various gangs, he was a facebook friend with a full-patch Hells Angel from the new West Point chapter. The online page was removed Thursday afternoon.

Malo said Widdifield’s “friends, his family and his associates know exactly what Craig Widdifield is all about and that’s the frustration.”

He said he couldn’t comment on whether police knew there was a bounty on Widdifield’s head.

“We knew him very well and he knew the police very well,” Malo said.

Malo said over the last four months, CFSEU has compiled a list of the B.C. gangsters who pose the greatest public risk and circulated it to police province-wide.

“Our next step is to engage every front line police officer in the province to let them know exactly who these prolific offenders are,” he said. “The idea is that we will make available, law permitting, the names of the individuals that are the most prolific.”

Fordy called on the public and businesses across the Lower Mainland to take a stand against gangsters in their midst

“I think it is time for society to recognize that there is a bigger role for them to play,” Fordy said, calling for public boycotts of businesses who continue to allow gangsters inside.

“My expectation is that if a specific business decides to outlaw criminals from coming into their establishment, if they take that position, we will stand beside them and we will help them deliver that message very clearly.”

Meanwhile, the busy Morgan Crossing shopping complex was almost back to normal by Thursday afternoon.

Joy Del Rosario was shopping metres from the police tape with her four-year-old and husband, unaware of what had occurred until a reporter asked her about it.

“It is shocking. We shop here a lot,” she said. “I know it can happen anywhere, but you are not expecting it in this neighbourhood.”

Wayne Chmilar, who lived for years in the area and was visiting Thursday from the Sunshine Coast, said the gang problem stems in part from the inability of the courts to deal with organized crime in B.C.

“The guys like Bindy Johal are now history, but there’s always someone to replace them,” he said. “They get lawyered up, they play the game. The police go on trial before the criminals do.”

His adult son “was aware” of Widdifield from his school days.

“He had a very good background. His parents were well to do, but he chose this life when he could have got any education he wanted. It is a sad commentary.”

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